Chapter 1256: The Roving Bandits Are Doomed

In the ninth month of the nineteenth year of Hongxing of the Great Ming, on the Yangtze River.

A fleet of forty to fifty oar-and-sail river vessels, each of two hundred to four hundred tons burden, was sailing in two columns against the current, making its way up the Yangtze waterway toward Wuchang Prefecture. Among the fleet, one vessel stood out especially: the largest hull, its burden estimated at over four hundred tons, a large oar-and-sail warship with a total of twenty-four six-catty bronze cannons mounted along its sides.

Yet the reason this warship drew the eye was not its size or armament, but the red banner flying from the mizzenmast raised atop its high, upswept sterncastle — a banner snapping in the wind, embroidered in black thread with seven great characters: The Great Ancestor, Exalted Emperor, Lives Again!

Anyone with the slightest knowledge of the Great Ming's military affairs knew that this great banner signified that the Son of Heaven of the Great Ming, Zhu Cilang, was personally leading the campaign.

The Son of Heaven of the Great Ming himself was actually aboard this not particularly large fleet!

He was standing now beneath that "Great Ancestor, Exalted Emperor, Lives Again" banner, leaning on the railing, gazing at the surface of the Yangtze and at the boundless fields along the river's northern shore.

The river was still quite lively, with no small number of vessels coming and going, most of them heading east, the greater part laden with grain, timber, iron, and porcelain. Sailors aboard some of the merchant ships had spotted that "Great Ancestor, Exalted Emperor, Lives Again" banner and knew the Ming Emperor was personally on campaign, so they knelt on their decks toward the Emperor's warship, cheering.

The cheers carried across the river, still ringing loud and clear when they reached the Zhu Emperor's ears.

"Long live Our Emperor, long live, long live, ten thousand times ten thousand!"

These were likely sailors from merchant ships out of the Two Lakes region. Zhu Cilang caught a trace of the familiar Hunan accent, and a gratified smile appeared on his face — from these joyful voices he could feel that Huguang's economy had developed very well indeed over these past few years!

Not only had agriculture produced bountiful harvests year after year, but mining, forestry, and handicrafts had all developed well too.

In particular, the Daye Iron Mountain east of Wuchang Prefecture had been developed on a large scale. The three great financial groups — the Royal Trading Company, the Sand Ship Guild, and the Yiguan Party — had all sunk enormous capital into Daye Iron Mountain, not only opening mines but also building ironworks along the Yangtze's banks where water and land transport were convenient. These were all large iron factories fully equipped with blast furnaces, puddling furnaces, crucible furnaces, forge furnaces, and water-powered trip hammers. The ironworks under these three great financial groups alone could produce tens of thousands of tons of wrought iron every year!

If one added the ironworks opened at Pukou, Shanghai, Xuzhou, Quanzhou, and Guangzhou (Foshan), the Great Ming's wrought iron output now exceeded one hundred thousand tons — securely first in the world!

And these one hundred thousand tons were not brittle coal-smelted iron, but high-quality charcoal-smelted iron, produced using lime slag removal (Ming Dynasty blacksmiths already knew of lime slag removal) and the technique of hundred-fold forging into steel (repeated forging with water-powered hammers), capable of yielding wrought iron of quite excellent quality. If surface-hardened by the Su steel method (quenching cast iron onto the surface), it could produce ironware of outstanding quality.

And high-quality ironware, especially farm tools, was beyond doubt a tremendous force driving social production.

Yet what drove the Great Ming's social production, and especially its agricultural production, most of all was not these high-quality iron farm tools, but a "land reform" that had lasted more than twenty years. The nature of this "land reform" was, of course, capitalist!

For the heart of the reform was not the equal division of land that later generations found so pleasing, but the clarification of ownership and the "rational transfer" of land.

The former consisted mainly of tax reform aimed at abolishing the "land commendation system" and the recovery of public fields — now on the Great Ming's directly administered territory there was no private land that did not pay tax (public land paid rent). Not only did the land of officials and nobles have to pay tax, even the imperial fields owned by the royal house had to pay tax as well, and even the sacrificial fields used to honor the Great Ancestor's Xiao Mausoleum had to pay tax according to law! Of course, office fields, merit fields, imperial estate fields, and imperial mausoleum sacrificial fields were all eligible for tax refunds.

Pay first, refund later — taxes were paid locally, while refunds were the responsibility of the Ministry of Revenue!

Under such circumstances, it was all but impossible for officials and ennobled merit families to exploit loopholes of unequal taxation to carry out commendation schemes and swallow up commoners' land — no matter who served as Minister of Revenue, getting money out of the Ministry of Revenue was never an easy matter!

Local land taxes, commercial taxes, mining taxes, and the like were gradually linked to the incomes of local officials, the budgets of local yamen, and their staffing quotas.

Moreover, officials at the subprefecture (dependent subprefecture, equivalent to a county) and county level and below (including subprefecture and county) were usually locals (above subprefecture and county they were usually outsiders), so the amount of tax collected directly affected the interests of the local bureaucratic group, and there was no incentive to under-collect.

As for swallowing up public land, that was even more difficult, because after several rounds of cadastral surveys, public fields and hidden fields had all been entered into the fish-scale registers, and there were offices subordinate to the Ministry of Revenue responsible for leasing them out by tender. One could not say the tender and lease process was free of corruption and trickery, but seizure and annexation were basically impossible.

After burying the "land commendation system" that distributed land by power, Zhu Cilang began gradually promoting the rational transfer of land. Under the Great Ming's capitalist system, preventing the transfer of land was impossible, and also uneconomical.

After all, managing land was a risky business, and in business there were losses and gains — those who lost withdrew, those who gained took over, and property gradually concentrated. That was the general trend.

By rights Zhu Cilang should not have interfered in land management, but through the Northern Expedition and the Liaodong War, the Ming court had acquired a great deal of "ownerless land" in the north.

A portion of this land was converted into land bonds, used to pay military expenses — and the redemption of those land bonds was full of hidden intricacies.

This was an opportunity to establish large-scale agriculture in the north — large-scale agriculture usually appeared in wheat-producing regions, because wheat fields were dry fields that could use highly efficient horse-drawn plowing. Moreover, in the seventeenth century, dry-field yields were rather unstable, which was very unfavorable to smallholder production. It was therefore more conducive to the establishment of large agricultural estates.

Thus the disposal of the northern "ownerless land" and the trading of land bonds were both aimed at promoting the emergence of large agricultural estates.

Though the process was somewhat dark — the so-called "ownerless" was in truth the expropriation of the northern landlord class! And the fluctuations of the land bonds caused many speculators to go bankrupt and many soldiers holding land bonds to sell at low prices — still, the result Zhu Cilang wanted had essentially come about.

Of course, the concentration of land was also connected to the Great Ming's entry into the age of colonization and capitalism. The former offered landless peasants and the "non-heir sons" of noble and bureaucratic families the possibility of seeking opportunities overseas, while the latter gave the great cities of the southeast the possibility of absorbing this population.

And the progress of Ming agriculture powerfully supported the development of industry and commerce, especially the great industrial and commercial centers of the southeast — the economy of the Celestial Empire now ran around the industry and commerce of the Ming southeast! And it had formed a rather virtuous cycle, giving the economy of the Great Ming and even the entire Celestial civilization a certain flourishing vitality.

Oh, but not the entire Celestial civilization was flourishing. There was still one place developing rather poorly — the region ruled by the roving bandits who called themselves the Shun dynasty.

The intelligence on the Shun Empire's economic development that reached the Zhu Emperor through every channel all demonstrated one fact — the Shun Empire's economy was clearly in decline, and they were facing an enormous economic crisis, a crisis that had taken them by surprise and that they could not overcome.

Therefore, upon learning that Li Jicheng had plundered India on a grand scale and returned laden with spoils, Zhu Cilang had made up his mind and drawn open the curtain on the destruction of the roving-bandit regime.

Just then, the sound of boots striking the deck planks reached the Zhu Emperor's ears. He glanced back and saw that it was Huang Xiaobao, the seal-holder of the Directorate of Ceremonial, walking over quickly, his face full of delight.

"Your Majesty, good news!" Huang Xiaobao said. "A six-hundred-li express dispatch has just arrived by naval dispatch boat. The office of the Governor-General of Yunnan, Guizhou, and Sichuan reports that the rebel Li Guo has died of illness!"

Zhu Cilang nodded lightly and smiled. "He got a peaceful death after all. Fine fortune — he can lie comfortably in the ground now!"

(End of Chapter)